By Helen Pitt
This year, ABC journalists Leigh Sales and Annabel Crabb celebrate a decade of their Chat 10 Looks 3 podcast, which began as a conversation between friends and has grown to have an online following of nearly 50,000 people.
Named for the Dance: 10, Looks: 3 song from the musical A Chorus Line, the podcast has toured nationally, and in July, Sales and Crabb will head to London to perform at the Royal College of Music. As a prelude to that, they will appear with the Australian Chamber Orchestra in April in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, in a show called For the Love of Music with Chat 10 Looks 3. Here they grill ACO cellist Julian Thompson about what it takes to be a classical musician.
Leigh Sales and Annabel Crabb, with Australian Chamber Orchestra cellist Julian Thompson and baritone cello (nicknamed Barry) at the ACO’s harbourside headquarters in Walsh Bay, Sydney.Credit: Max Mason-Hubers
What’s your musical background?
Leigh Sales: I learnt organ and piano when I was a kid. I’ve been doing cello for the past two years now, so I’m an enthusiastic amateur. I do an hour of practice every single day but it’s been so hard, so humbling.
Julian Thompson: I’m always jumping between instruments to try to learn different stuff. I’m learning the trumpet at the moment. And the trombone. I’ve never played a single reed instrument – so that’s like learning a new language, as well as teaching your body to do a bunch of weird gymnastics.
Annabel Crabb: I had piano lessons as a kid and they went nowhere. My interest in this ACO project is actually sort of different from Sales’. I know a lot less about the mechanics of music than she does. My nosiness is probably as much around what makes you choose this instrument.
Sales: Your chief qualification is that you’ve been earbashed by me. And that you have been on holidays with me and my cello because I don’t like to miss any practice.
Crabb: It gets the front seat of the car. Would you do that, Julian, dump your mate to give the cello the front seat of the car?
Thompson: Absolutely, yes, the cello takes priority. Like this cello – we call him Barry because he has beautiful low tones, like Barry White – is nearly 300 years old. It’s a beautiful cello. You wouldn’t want to put it on your back and ride down to the ferry because it is irreplaceable. But I have an electric cello that’s pretty good for carrying around on public transport.
Sales:This is why cellists always fly economy, right? Because they need two seats?
Thompson: That’s right. Barry always sits next to me as he needs to be strapped in. He doesn’t have his own frequent flyer number. He does sometimes demand drinks.
ACO cellist Julian Thompson gives some behind-the-scenes tips on how to play the cello to journalists Leigh Sales and Annabel Crabb.Credit: Max Mason-Hubers
Crabb: Sales takes the cello everywhere because she frets about the state of her calluses. What is the state of your calluses, Julian? How long do they take to soften up?
Thompson: Everyone’s different but my calluses just sort of stay the same all the time (hard).
Crabb: Is that some sort of genealogical gift you have?
Thompson: Some people get these huge froggy fingers – you see them on double bass players all the time.
Crabb: When you meet another player of a big stringed instrument and they’ve got froggy fingers … is that … like a challenge? Do you discreetly check each other out?
Thompson: We usually have a callus-off.
Crabb: Would [violinist] Richard Tognetti have a different sort of callus from yours?
Thompson: Violinists have what we call ‘the hickey’. This huge mark on their neck where the instrument goes. I don’t know whether they size each other up by the size of their hickeys like we do with our calluses. I’ve got this odd-shaped finger that’s just from playing first finger for a million hours over 40 years. You often find with string players, their left hands are bigger than the right hand just because of all that use. So your body goes ‘oh, I need more nutrients here … we’ll just grow that hand a bit bigger’.
Crabb: So you wind up like one of those fiddler crabs. Interesting. What kind of weird physical deformities do other people have, like in the non-string section of the orchestra?
Richard Tognetti leads the Australian Chamber Orchestra through a Mozart and Britten program at Sydney’s City Recital Hall in 2022.Credit:
Thompson: Wind players reportedly have quite dextrous tongues. For wind players it is really internal. Breath control, core stability. When we talk about “chops”, as in “this player really has chops”, the term comes from wind players having to sustain all of these complicated muscles.
Sales: A really important element of what you do is looking after yourself physically. What do you do to stay fit?
Thompson: I’m obsessed with all water-based activities. I surf all the time. I love wind-surfing and foiling.
Crabb: Isn’t that dangerous?
Thompson: Look, water is pretty safe. It’s the other stuff that’s not water that can be problematic.
Crabb: So what would you rule out? What wouldn’t you do?
Thompson: Rock climbing.
Sales: Good call – you don’t want to have to chop your own arm off.
Thompson: Yes, like in the film 127 Hours. Obviously in rock climbing there’s heaps of static holds, with your hands in a fixed position. That’s exactly what we don’t want. Cello players need nimble and flexible hands to do all those micro-adjustments on the instrument. Even things like weightlifting is not good for a cellist, you don’t want your biceps to get too big. You could imagine playing those low positions on the cello if you’re starting to battle with your own muscle mass.
Sales: I was shocked to hear the accordion player James Crabb plays hockey.
Thompson: He’s an elite-level hockey player.
Crabb: Is there anything you would like to change about classical music?
Thompson: The deferential nature of concert-going that we have in the modern world, which is a totally recent invention. It never used to be like that when you went to a concert in Beethoven’s time.
For the Love of Music with Chat 10 Looks 3 and the Australian Chamber Orchestra is on April 8 at Queensland Performing Arts Centre, April 9 at the Sydney Opera House, and April 12 at the Arts Centre Melbourne.